


Teenage Blues (I Hate you)

by Taylahlovee



Category: The Goonies (1985)
Genre: Brother/Brother Incest, F/M, Incest, Internal Conflict, M/M, Multi, Polyamorous relationship, Polyamory, Slow Burn, Slow Romance, Teenagers, threeway relationship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-31
Updated: 2018-05-31
Packaged: 2019-05-16 16:31:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14814896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Taylahlovee/pseuds/Taylahlovee
Summary: Mikey hates being the third wheel almost as much as he hates being the smallest.





	Teenage Blues (I Hate you)

It had been nearly three years. Three _whole_ years. One thousand and three days, roughly, if he divided the year into quarters, there would be just around a quarter left. So here he was, approximately one thousand and three days, three hours, fifteen minutes and- he checked the crappy pocket watch in his hand again- thirty-two seconds later. All those years and he still felt like barely any time had passed at all.

Brand shifted next to him, reminding Mikey of his presence, and why he was there. He still had the recurring nightmares. They had originally started the week following Mikey and the rest of the Goonies’ ‘adventure' down in the tunnels underneath the restaurant, and the trouble with the Fratelli's. His mom had taken him to a therapist to get him checked out after she had gotten one too many calls from the school saying he had been falling asleep during classes, and after finding out why he had been having so many restless nights.

They'd prescribed him with some useless pills to help him sleep, and they worked for a few weeks, but soon after the nightmares came back in full force. He'd woken up one night from a particularly bad one, and ended up flushing the whole contents of the container since all they did by then was make him feel drowsy and make it exceptionally hard to concentrate on anything. He hadn't had the heart to tell his mom, and he didn't want her to worry, so she kept renewing the prescription and he kept flushing them.  
Brand was the only one who knew he still had the nightmares. He hadn’t bothered to tell anyone, especially none of the other Goonies. After all, there was a reason Clark was called Mouth. Brand was the one he told everything to, and he eventually found out everything, even things Mikey didn’t want him to, so it was really no surprise when he had caught him out.

It was also the reason why, on nights like this, when he woke up with his knuckles turning white from his pale, shaking hands gripping the sheets, and his forehead covered with a thin sheet of cold sweat, Brand was there to turn the radio up a little to keep his cover, and to sit on the other side of his bed whilst he slowly came back to reality. He'd only been able to make out Brand's voice, like a beacon of light pulling him out of the dream, and away from the cold, cruel hands around his neck. He thought he'd been delusional, hearing his brother's voice. But then he'd heard it again, as he had felt the knife press into his cheek, the emotionless voice of his attacker, raspy from too many cigarettes, let out a low, scratchy laugh. The pressure around his throat had felt so real, a searing, spreading blister of pain, the knife digging in just enough to draw blood, to bring about a stinging sensation as it was dragged down his skin. And then it was gone. And then… and then he'd opened his eyes. And then he was in a dark room, his eyes had slowly adjusted to the darkness, the only light appearing through the crack in the middle of the two curtains. And then he'd seen Brand's worried eyes examining him closely, his body impossibly still; as if he was scared Mikey would break at the slightest touch.

It had begun happening at least a few nights a week. Brand would lay next to him when he woke up, not for any other reason other than because he worried about him. He'd only asked the first couple of nights, then it had become a kind of routine. It was funny, really. He could remember them doing the same thing when they were both just little kids. When there was a storm, and they didn't want to sleep separately, or when Mikey was just six or seven and still worried that there were monsters hiding underneath his bed, they'd sleep back to back and he'd immediately feel safer. It would be a hell of a lot more embarrassing admitting that now, and he wouldn't dare because he knew that he'd be teased until they were both old and grey, but even now when he'd turned fifteen only a few weeks ago he preferred having Brand there next to him.

“You okay, dork?” he felt his older brothers body shift, and turn to him just the slightest, and his right arm snaked around his back and around his shoulder, and brought their sides together in an awkward but much needed brotherly half-hug.

"I'm fine." _Just your average nightmare about getting murdered by a family of deranged killers, what's new?_ He grabbed the inhaler from the bedside table and took a long breath of much-needed relief. One thing he'd realized, from leaving his inhaler on the beach; don't leave behind important things behind just because you're pissed off. He had come to regret that decision during the next fall.

“We never should’ve gotten into that whole mess, wasn’t worth it.”

"We got to keep the house," he argued. "We didn't have to move, and we don't have any money problems anymore. If we hadn't gone down there none of that stuff would have changed, and we'd be in Detroit, with a golf course right here instead of our house. We don't have to worry about any of that anymore."

“Yeah, right. Now I’ve got you to worry about instead,” the arm on his shoulder moved fast, and by the time he noticed it coming he was in a headlock, Brand’s other hand messing up his already untidy hair.

"Hey, k-knock it off Brand," his voice wavered as he tried to force his huge lump of a brother off of him. "Seriously, you're gonna mess with my asthma and mums gonna kill you, get off me,” the sound of deep laughter was followed by his release, and he pushed at the brick wall that was Brand’s arm, not even managing to move it an inch.

“Yeah, maybe it would’ve been worth it if it hadn’t screwed with your head so much.”

“Shut up, and get off me,” he managed to choke out, and the arm around his neck was gone.

"Sorry kid," he rolled over so his back was facing Mikey again, and Mikey did the same, their backs inches apart. "You should try and get some sleep. Unless you want to get detention for falling asleep in class again." A smirk pulled at Brand's lips and Mikey rolled his eyes.

“Shut up, Brand.” He ignored his older sibling’s laughter, shifted to the most comfortable position he could find, and reluctantly closed his eyes. He pulled the sheets up to cover his bare shoulders and buried his head in the pillows, the sound of slow breathing next to him giving him an embarrassingly comforting sense of security as he drifted in and out of unconsciousness, before finally giving in to sleep.

The next time he opened his eyes, it was the obnoxiously loud buzz of his alarm clock that woke him. He sat up, taking the covers with him and holding them to his pale, freckled chest. The other side of the bed was empty. His head thumped as he stood up, and he reached into his closet to grab a white t-shirt, a pair of baggy blue jeans, and his familiar denim jacket. He pulled on his socks and his battered black sneakers that badly needed to be replaced any day now and walked down the stairs, each footstep sending a quiet, low creaking sound through the silent house.

Brand was already dressed and ready, busy chewing on one of his protein bars that made Mikey screw up his nose in distaste, sitting at the table with a weight in his other hand, like usual. His knees only just squeezed under the low table, a reminder of how much he had grown in the last few years. Even with all the muscle he’d gained his height left him looking thin, not like Mikey, but in a good way. He was evenly proportioned. Mikey was almost worryingly small. He’d always been scrawny, and he hadn’t changed much in his teenage years. He felt like a small child next to Brand, barely reaching his shoulder. Sometimes he wondered how they could even be related, they looked nothing alike; Mikey, besides being wiry and short, was also ridiculously pale and freckled, and he barely went on in the sun without protection for five minutes, with the fear of being burned always present. His hair was a wild and untamed mess of dark brown and auburn waves. His face was soft and rounded, and he knew he wasn’t attractive, not really. But he was okay with that, at least for right now. Brand was his opposite; his complexion was much darker than his, whilst still being on the paler side, and his dark hair sat perfectly, where Mikey’s seemed to have a mind of its own, and he his jawline jutted out sharply, prominent against the softness of his facial features. The only thing they had in common was their eyes. That was the one thing that really showed they were related. The same rounded shape, eyes that were so quick to give away emotion, twin brown iris’s that held shades of amber and caramel and small flecks of green and ocean blue, outlined by the same long dark lashes.

He shivered as the morning breeze came through the open kitchen window, blew over him as it passed, and took his train of thought with it. He felt the goose-bumps rise on his arms even through the thick blue fabric, which still hung loosely on his slim frame. Ignoring the biting wind, he sat down next to Brand, the small, rickety chair underneath him let out a low creak when he sat down. With all the money they had after they cashed in the rest of the jewels, there was more than enough for a new table set, but their parents had neglected to buy a new one, and honestly, if it had already been three years, Mikey didn't think it would ever happen.

“You look like shit,” Brand observed, his forehead glistening with sweat. He’d most likely been working out since he woke up. He still hadn’t grown out of that ridiculous exercise obsession.

"Yeah thanks, it must run in the family," he dodged the light slap across the back of the head and Brand shook his head and gave him a look that said _I won't miss next time_ , before returning his attention to the weight in his large hand.

Mikey rested his frayed denim-covered elbows on the table and rested his heavy head in his hands. His head felt terrible and his whole body ached. The pain in his head was familiar, the throbbing feeling reaching his temples, it was the usual headache that accompanied his night terrors. The beat of the pain matched his pulse, only becoming worse with every beat of his heart.

He reached into his side pocket and pulled out one of the half-empty packets of the painkillers labelled Vicodin that chunk had snuck him from the abandoned bottom shelf of his bathroom cabinet. He popped two out into his hand, dry swallowed them, and tried not to grimace as they scraped against his dry throat on the way down. Brand looked at him but didn’t speak for a few seconds, but Mikey knew the silence wouldn’t last.

“You know…” he started, and Mikey prepared himself for the repetitive conversation they’d had over and over. “Maybe you should start taking that medication for the nightmares again- “

“Brand…”

“I know they stopped working the first time, but maybe if you try them again-"

“They won’t work, we both know that. Trying them again won’t change that. Maybe for a few weeks but not for long.”

“So what? If they do stop then at least you got relief for a little while, right? I mean, even if they don’t work at all isn’t it better you know we tried again?”

“I don’t want to try again.”

“ _Mikey_ …” the sadness in his tone reached his eyes despite his usual tough exterior.

“Just leave it Brand. They don’t work, we’ve dis- dissected- no, discussed- we’ve discussed this a million times, maybe more and every time I tell you the same damn thing. Stop acting so big-brotherly, like you need to- to… to re-renovate” he saw Brand smirk and paused for a minute, wondering if he’d got the right word, and then decided it really didn’t matter when Brand corrected most of his words anyway. “Stop acting like you need to resolute me, or re- reflate me.”

" _What?_ "

"I don't know, that word that mean like- to fix something."

Both sounded smart, at least. “Whatever the word is.”

“It's repair, dummy.”

“Repair, that’s what I said.”

“Why are you so worried about it anyway?” his voice was louder than he'd realised, and he lowered it to a whisper again. “It isn’t important, stop worrying. It’s just nightmares. I’m dealing with it.”

Brand sighed in a disbelieving tone and shook his head. “Really Mikey, you think that what you’ve been doing with is dealing with it? You force yourself to stay up until one or two a.m. every _fucking_ morning, and when you do sleep it’s for a few restless hours. You wake up and look like shit because you’ve been awake all night and you have purple bags under your eyes that look like fucking bruises for god sake and you think that’s dealing? Of course I’m worried about you. You’re my brother, you idiot.”

The air between them was silent for a second, neither one of them looking up from their laps. He had no idea what to say, and despite their differences in appearance, it was painfully obvious how similar they were when it came to moments like this, they were both equally terrible at finding something to say to break the tension. Until. Until, “so, I guess that means you do actually care about someone other than yourself. Besides Andy, I mean.”  He dodged another headlock and got up out of his chair, knowing he’d probably try again. He started heading up the stairs.

“Hey, hurry up, Andy’s gonna be here soon to pick us up.” 

“Yeah, 'cause you still haven’t passed your driving test. I wonder how it feels to have to get your girlfriend to drive you to school,” he called from the railing. The sound of Brand’s chair scraping on the tiles was more than enough encouragement for him to move his scrawny butt up the stairs.

Andy had gotten her license just before her seventeenth birthday and her parents had decided to buy her a brand new cherry-red Chevy as a present. It shocked him that they had enough to spend just on a car, but then he remembered that she wasn’t from the Goon Docks like the rest of the rest of the Goonies. It was funny how often he forgot that she was from the rich part of town, where people like Troy Perkins and his good-for-nothing dad lived. Where they joked and made belittling jokes about people who lived in the less-than-wealthy neighbourhoods. People like him. But Andy wasn’t like that. She was sweet and kind and loving and she never talked bad about anyone, unless of course she was caught in a bad row with Stef. The insults they could throw at each other could rival the crap that dripped from Clark's mouth daily, and _that_ was saying something.

His head thumped with every step he took up the stairs. When he reached his room he locked the door, for safety reasons, he told himself, as he pulled on a white t-shirt and a pair of faded blue jeans with a few small holes in the knee, from that time he’d fallen off his bike and scraped his leg last summer. Despite being years old, the jeans still had some growing space, and every time he wore them it just put into perspective how tiny he was. It seemed like Mouth needed new clothes every couple of months to keep up with his persistent growth spurts, Data was going through pairs of shoes like Chunk went through tubs of ice-cream, and, speaking of Chunk, even he had grown somewhat in the last few years. He still had a bit of his childhood fat, but he was losing more of it every day, and though it was gradual, slowly but surely, he was growing into his body. He barely looked like the short, stumpy kid he had been a few years ago. He loved them all, but it frustrated him a lot of the time, being the smallest. He was pulled out of his thoughts when there was a loud knock on the door, he knew it was Brand. He considered keeping it locked briefly, but if Brand was going to do anything to him that would just mean the outcome would be worse, really. He unlocked it and the door was barged open, Brand closing it behind him.

“What have you been doing? You’ve been up here so long I thought you might’ve been dead. Guess you were just daydreaming about all the crazy shit dad feeds you like usual, hey?”

“He was right about One-Eyed Willy,” he argued.

“Whatever,” he tussled Mikey’s hair for a second then turned his back to him as he grabbed a near empty roll-on deodorant (the perks of sharing a room with someone who had asthma, right?) and slipped on a jacket as Mikey headed to the bathroom. One stroke of his fingers through his hair and a half-assed effort at properly brushing his teeth (braces were a pain in the ass) later and he was walking back down the oak stairs. The small pot on the stove made a quiet high-pitched squeak that fuelled the ache in his skull and made it almost impossible to think about anything else. His eyelids felt heavy and he looked up at the clock on the kitchen wall, watching the hand counting the seconds, his gaze following every small movement as he tried to keep his eyes open. This had been routine for at least a few months, and he couldn’t remember the last time he had woken up and not felt the need to close his eyes again. Today was going to be one of those days where it’d be nearly impossible to stay awake.

The sound of a car pulling up the to the house, followed by two sharp two beeps of the horn. Well, no time for coffee now. Damn. “Andy’s here,” he called up the stairs. The sound of Brand’s rushed footsteps was clearly audible. He grabbed the small brown paper bag out of the fridge before he shoved the front door open, not waiting for Brand before he made his way to the back door. His foot slipped, and he stumbled a little as he hoisted himself up into the backseat and closed the door. His headache pounded as an annoyingly boppy Cyndi Lauper song blared through the speakers in front and on either side of him. He must have released a pained groan because a second later he could hear her gasp. “Oh shit, sorry, I totally forgot!” the copper-red haired teen exclaimed. A second later the volume was merely a buzzing whisper. She turned to face him, and the pain must have shown on his face. “Another headache, Mikey?” she frowned. “Maybe you should see someone about that.”

He rested his face in the palm of his hand before responding. “Yeah that’s a great idea Andy, I’ll just go to the doctors for a headache. Then I’ll get laughed at and kicked out for sounding like an idiot,” her green-brown eyes widened in worry and she bit her lip and turned back to the front. He could see her watching him through the rear-view mirror.  
“I know it sounds ridiculous but I’m just…”

“Worried?” she pursed her lips and looked away when his eyes met hers. Everyone knew by now that Mikey hated people feeling bad for him. Especially Andy and Brand. They were the two he usually went to for advice or when he was having a _"teen-life crisis."_ He knew they didn’t mean it but he didn’t want them to feel sorry for him.

“There’s nothing to be worried about Andy,” he muttered.

“I know you don’t like it when Brand and I worry, but it’s only because we care about you. You know he’s always going to worry about you, he’s your big brother after all.”

“I know I just… I know,” he said. He didn’t bother finishing the sentence.

“Brand loves you, and so do I. You’re important to both of us and we don’t care how silly you think your feelings are, we’re still going to care. I know you think your nightmares are stupid or you feel embarrassed about them, but you can’t help it and we don’t care how small a problem is, no matter what’s wrong. It’s not like we’re going to judge you. We’ll be here for you,” her face held a look of pure determination. “So you better get used to it kiddo,” and then it was gone, replaced by a teasing smile that spread across her rose-pink lips.

“Thanks, Andy,” he looked down at his lap, but he knew she was still smiling. “When did you become so good at giving me advice? I feel like you’re my babysitter or something.”  
She laughed, “well if that was true I would’ve been paid by now.” The passenger door opened a few seconds later and Brand got in.

“Ah, he finally shows up,” Andy teased.

“I didn’t take that long,” he rolled his eyes, but the small smile on his lips gave him away as he leaned forward to plant a second-long kiss on her lips. He watched as they considered each other’s eyes for a few seconds, Andy smiling sheepishly as his older brother watched her with fascinated puppy-dog-eyes. A weird sinking feeling grew in the pit of his stomach, but it was also a warm sensation at the same time and he didn’t know what it was. It was probably just the fact that it still weirded him out a little seeing them together. He’d grown used to it by now, but it was still strange to him, even after three years. Maybe it was just Brand being so affectionate and loving with someone. He’d never seen Brand let his guard down the way he did around Andy. He was happy for them, but it was something he didn’t see much. Brand didn’t like many people outside of the Goonies, Andy had been the exception.

“Are we gonna leave anytime soon, or are you gonna kiss him again? I don’t think you should, his breath is pretty bad,” a large hand pushed his shoulder and he flew into the seat.

“Hey!”

“Shut-up Mikes."

Andy laughed and shook her head. “Brothers,” she started the car up again and reversed down the gravel driveway and onto the road after waiting for a lone car.  
That same unusual-though-not-bad-feeling swirled in his stomach and he didn’t know what it was, but he honestly didn’t care. It really didn’t matter. The pain in his head didn’t matter, or the fact that his day was probably going to be shitty and he would have trouble staying awake. Right now, he just tried to focus on the good. That for right now, and for the next ten minutes at least, he was with two of his favourite people.

**Author's Note:**

> So I've decided to re-upload this fic. I'm not sure where I'm going with it but I have a plan and I'm so excited to write this again seeing as it's been almost a year.


End file.
